Vasta
Legionary
posted 09 April 2015 16:43
EDT (US)
3 / 3
Conventional logic says Carthage was essentially dead in the water by the time the Third War rolled around, but that's coming entirely from a Roman perspective and one that tended to view the destruction of Carthage as a bad thing. So it makes sense that you'd want to create a narrative where it was "why did you even bother?"
I don't know if they wanted to actually colonize and take-over the region though. The politics of the Jugurthine War as presented by Sallust makes it sound like the only thing stopping Rome from getting into the war was corruption and bribery, but a reasonable interpretation is that the many in the Senate did not want to get involved in what was clearly an internal dispute.
If Carthage had been allowed to go on its merry way, I think the most likely outcome would have been similar to that in Egypt, where it was eventually turned into a subjugated client kingdom and - considering its prominence and economic power - turned into a directly ruled province.